


The Shattered King

by toocleverfox



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M, POV Cardan Greenbriar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 16:17:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18502546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toocleverfox/pseuds/toocleverfox
Summary: “Cardan was not used to humans like Jude.”A short story starting when Cardan and Jude first meet as children and ending after the events of The Wicked King.





	The Shattered King

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for The Cruel Prince and The Wicked King!

_“But this is all I ever was_  
_And this is all you came across those years ago_  
_Now you go too far_  
_Don't tell me that I've changed because that's not the truth_ _  
And now I'm losing you”_

 

At seven years old, Cardan became used to humans in Elfhame.

They floated down the halls, eyes glassy and lips chapped. They cleaned his bookshelves and his desk and picked up the clothes he would toss on his bedroom floor. They cooked him his meals and ran him his baths, all with far away eyes.

He tried multiple times to get their attention, poked them and made faces and even went as far as scratching a young human boy, but whatever geas hung over them forbid the human servants from interacting with the prince.

Cardan discovered this early enough, frowning at the vacant stares they gave him before he would run back to the garden to play among the tall grass with others his age.

What took him longer to learn was that humans were strange beings, that they broke differently than fae.

He was playing hide and seek with Locke, hiding in a kitchen cabinet, with the door slightly ajar to watch out for the sly boy, when Balekin walked in, a human servant behind him. Cardan watched as the geas slipped away and the human screamed and screamed and screamed as Balekin watched, bored. Why would Balekin remove the enchantment? What purpose did that serve but to ruin the human? What did Balekin gain from their suffering? Cardan was too young to understand and too terrified to move. He waited until another servant came and took away the sobbing human, face emotionless. Cardan could not fathom what had happened.

He knew that humans were thoughtless from the countless stories he had heard. They were always falling in love with the wrong beings, dooming themselves as they looked on with longing in their eyes. They were easy to trick into becoming servants as they desired that which was always too far out of reach, but close enough for a faerie to take advantage of.

And they were also so fearful. Afraid of anything and everything that did not make sense with the world they created in their heads. A bundle of flaws, in the shape of a being, was why they made perfect servants.

Humans were, and are, nothing.

But that moment stirred something in the young boy, and when seven year old Cardan first saw Jude Duarte he thought that maybe he was mistaken.

He was in the forest, swinging a sword Balekin had given him through the thicket, when he stumbled across a girl leaning against a tree, crying. She did not look very different from him. From any faerie. Her hair shone and her skin was smooth, though it was tear stained and she had a crease between her eyebrows from the glare she was sending Cardan’s way.

The only difference he could notice physically were her curved ears.

Such a small difference that he almost overlooked it. Almost.

But kids are mean; faerie children are no exception.

“You are not one of us,” Cardan said, chin held high like he had seen his brothers and sisters do.

The girl wiped her tears and bawled her hands into fists, staring daggers at him.

“Thanks for pointing it out, Captain Obvious,” she snarled.

Cardan stumbled back. No one had ever spoken to him in such a way. He was a prince. A prince of _Elfhame_. He wanted to yell at her, push her to the ground so she would scrape her stupid mortal knees. Instead, he cocked his head and curiously asked “Who is Captain Obvious?”  

The girl pouted. “Everyone here is dumb. Who doesn’t know who Captain Obvious is?”

“Is he part of the King’s army?” Cardan asked, intrigued. He knew a lot of creatures in Elfhame. How did this mortal girl know someone a prince did not?

To Cardan’s shock, new tears spilled over the girl’s cheeks after his question. “I _hate_ this place!” She seethed. Then she furrowed her eyebrows as something seemed to dawn on her. She took in the way Cardan’s crown sat lopsided amongst his inkjet hair and glared into his eyes. This small child looked as though she would burn the whole world down and then rebuild it herself, just to do it all over again. “And I absolutely hate _you_ ,” she growled, before turning and marching through the thicket, leaving the little prince to his thoughts.

Cardan was old enough to understand not many people loved him. Perhaps even no one did. But he thought humans were supposed to be different.

Were they not kind to everyone? They loved foolishly and died young, did they not?

Cardan had walked home then, frowning all the way, thinking about the girl with the round ears.

 

_______________

 

The second time Cardan saw the mortal she was alone, sitting in a grass patch in the forest, not far from General Madoc’s home. She had a book in her hands and was eating an apple.

“You should not eat our food,” Cardan blurted as he walked out from behind a tree, causing the girl to jump slightly. She set her possessions down and stood, pulling a long sword from her side and pointing it at Cardan.

“Oh, it’s you again,” she realized, still keeping the sword aimed at him, though she was less tense than before. “And I’m well aware of that, thank you very much.”

Cardan put his hands up to calm the girl as he walked closer. She seemed different from last time, her face guarded and her eyes hard. He squinted. “Where did you get that... awfully large sword?”

The girl stood up taller at the question and twirled the blade in her hand. “Madoc. He said I need to learn how to protect myself here.”

Cardan nodded. Even though he was a child he understood what a twisted place Elfhame was. He had seen the worst of it firsthand. “Your father is smart.”

The girl’s demeanor changed rapidly. Her smirk dropped and she looked away. “He is _not_ my father,” she growled lowly.

Cardan dropped his hands. “Who is he then?”

“A murderer,” she said immediately, looking up again.

 _A murderer_. She said it as though General Madoc was the only killer she had crossed paths with. As though she did not walk past murderers, torturers, and kidnappers everyday in Cardan’s world.

He wondered what being human felt like. In a world that was safe; at least safer than any Cardan knew. Cardan almost envied her for a moment because she was mortal, because mortals were everything he could never be.

Cardan decided to drop the topic as he sat down on the grass, facing where the girl had been sitting previously. He picked some flowers and began constructing a crown. “What is your name?” He asked. The girl watched as he delicately tied the flowers together and smiled when she realized what he was doing.

Cardan felt his heart stutter.

She sat down in front of him, her hand still clutching the sword. “Jude. Jude Duarte.”

Cardan swallowed and looked back down at his creation. “I am Prince Cardan.”

“You don’t look like a prince.” Jude tilted her head. “At least not yet. Will you be a king one day?”

Cardan shook his head. “No. My brother will be though. Or maybe one of my sisters.”

“Oh,” she said. She sounded disappointed. “I’d love to be a queen. Then I could force Madoc to take me home and buy me all the fish sticks I want.”

Cardan frowned. He wanted to ask what “fish sticks” were but instead he asked, “Is Elfhame not your home?”

Jude laughed outright then, a bitter thing. “Of course not. Isn’t it obvious I’m not from here?”

Cardan shrugged. “I have seen humans here.”

“Ones that aren’t servants?”

“Yes.”

Jude raised an eyebrow at him. “Not many though, right?”

He did not say anything. He could not lie and for some reason he did not want to upset Jude with his answer. “I can make you a queen,” Cardan said instead, showing her the completed flower crown in his hands.

Jude smiled and reached for the crown. Their fingers brushed and Cardan suppressed a shiver. Just as Jude had the flower crown in her hands, a faerie slightly older than Cardan burst through the trees.

“Jude!” The faerie exclaimed, ignoring Cardan’s presence and running up to the girl. “I was worried when you didn’t come home on time.” The other girl hauled Jude to her feet and hugged her tightly, causing Jude to drop the crown. “You know I can’t lose you too,” she said into Jude’s hair.

Jude hugged the faerie back just as hard. “I know, I’m sorry,” she mumbled into the faerie’s chest. “I was just playing outside.”

The other girl pulled back to look Jude over before she turned to Cardan. Shock registered on her face as she discerned who was sitting there.

“Prince Cardan,” she said. “I didn’t notice you were here,” the girl frowned, clearly not very sorry for ignoring the prince.

Cardan shrugged and stood, eyeing the forgotten crown on the floor.

The girl faced Jude and quickly tugged on her sleeve. “We should go.”

Jude nodded and the girl looked once more at Cardan before walking away. Jude turned to Cardan, waiting.

When Cardan did not speak she started to leave, following the faerie.

“Will I see you again?” Cardan called out, cursing himself silently. A prince should not care about seeing a mere mortal. Why would Cardan ask such a question?

Jude paused in her stride before craning her neck to look back at Cardan. She shrugged. “Unfortunately.”

Then she was gone.

Cardan sighed and looked down at his feet. He raised his eyebrows in surprise when he saw Jude had forgotten her book. He sat down and began flipping through the pages, admiring the strange drawings scattered throughout the book. He started reading it, losing track of time as he traveled into a different world.

An hour had passed before Cardan realized he needed to get home. He thought about leaving the book to see if Jude would come back to look for it, but in the end he decided to keep it.

He was a prince of Elfhame; surely he could take someone’s book if he so wished to.

When he went to his bedroom later on, he tucked the book into his bookshelf, safe from harm and prying eyes.

And if Cardan read the book over and over and over again, well, no one would know.

 

_______________

 

The third time Cardan saw Jude they were eight years old and just starting classes together. Cardan was sitting beside his friends, debating if he should ask Jude to sit with them when Locke suddenly pointed at Jude and her twin, whispering and laughing with Nicasia. Cardan frowned at their hysterics and glanced over at Jude. He saw her clench her jaw as she kept her eyes forward and focused on their lesson.

She never looked his way.

Whatever trust they had before was stripped away by the fact that he was an immortal prince and she was nothing but a mortal girl, forced into a world that should have never been hers to begin with.

A beat too late, Cardan joined in with his friends’ laughter.

He knew nothing between them would be the same again.

From that day on, hatred always seemed to roll off of Jude in waves, harsh and cold like the sea in a storm.

She was human, born in a world less cruel than the one Cardan had the unfortunate chance of being brought into, but she was also something else. She was not like all the other humans in Elfhame, the ones wandering either with hazy eyes or wide ones filled with fear. Something in her was broken, something that could not be healed, and yet somehow she used this buried agony to her advantage. Cardan was not used to humans like Jude.

He had believed mortals were different.

That in their world they did not hate like faeries did.

That they were lustful, ignorant, love drunk fools; something he would not mind being.

That every human was like that.

 

Cardan has been wrong before.

 

_______________

 

Years in the future, the day after he has exiled his wife from Elfhame, the High King enters her old bedroom and finds a book he thought he had lost forever.  
If anyone asks, he will claim he was merely there to see if the girl was hiding anything else, some dark secret hidden within the walls of a room no human child should have grown up in.  
In reality, the king silently weeps, tears staining the pages of a child’s book as he replays the image of his wife looking at him, pure hatred painting her features as she was hauled away.

 _If she did not truly hate me before_ , the king thinks, as he looks around the bedroom, _she surely will now._ _  
_ He sits on the bed, caressing the book’s cover with a ring-covered hand. When he flips through the pages of a faded _Alice in Wonderland_ , he stumbles upon a small slip of paper, with only one sentence written in the Queen’s neat scrawl.

 

_**just because i forgot about this book** _

_**does not mean you can take it !!** _

 

A note that might have meant nothing to someone else, means everything to the King of Elfhame. A simple message that has a hidden meaning: that she remembers, that she knows, that she is alright with knowing he had kept her childhood book safe all these years.

The king feels fresh tears rise as he chuckles sadly, glancing around the room again. It feels dark and empty to him, even though the curtains are open and the room is filled with sentimental belongings. The bedroom is in pristine condition, but it is obvious something about the room will never be the same again.

Like an emptiness that cannot be filled. Like a longing for something too far out of reach.

Finally, the king rises from where he was seated on the bed of his ex-lover. He wipes the tear stains from his cheeks and puts the book into his coat pocket, before striding out of the room, chin high like his brothers and sisters had once done.

 

_______________

 

When Cardan was young he had found out that humans can hate.  
  
When Cardan was older he had found out that faeries can love.  
  
Now, Cardan falls asleep each night in an empty bed, wishing he had never learned any of this.

 

When he sleeps he dreams of years ago, when an odd mortal girl reached for a crown he had woven seconds before.

And when he wakes his eyes stray to the left side of the bed, a familiar ache in his chest, like the harsh and cold waves of an angry sea.

May it take weeks, months, or even years, Cardan Greenbriar vows he will see Jude Duarte again.

He is a strange boy and she is a strange girl, after all.

Didn’t that always mean something in children’s books?

 

 _“Careful hands_  
_And wandering without that much to say_  
_Your words are empty as the bed we made_ _  
Is there another way?_

_Oh love, is there another way?”_

Ditmas by Mumford & Sons

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
